They could, but why would you make an immobile laptop? Defeats the purpose. The 17" is plenty big, almost too big to carry. I think the lineup is perfect the way it is. 12" small, light, powerful, and portable. 15" powerful, still portable, great display. 17" most powerful, expandable, awesome display.

Apple has everything they need in terms of portables right now. Now all they need to do is squeeze a G5 into those bad boys.

the other factor which kinda got me thinking about the relative 'thickness' is that this machine was to be marketed towards graphic professionals or creative art professionals, and some of these people who work in this industry already carry those rather large and flat leather bags that can house an entire portfolio of work...(I do not know what they are formally called)...

so that is what got me thinking about 0.5" thickness...

and for all of you creative types out there, sorry about the stereotype, as I know not everyone has one of those extremely large bags...

in the end if something was going to be larger than 17" or even 17" at all, it would be nice if it could be under an 1" in thickness...as that would make for a truly elegant piece of design and technology...

I have seen the 17 inch in the apple store and actualy picked it up from the table {ALL pc stores frown on the idea}, and surprisingly it ts thinner lighter and cooler than most pcs and what it has in screen it makes up for by NOT haveing a gigantic border around it for example, the 17' hp if exess molding was removed from the sides of the screen, a 19 inch would fit like a dream... it is possible, this time last year(13 months ago actualy) most pc and even mac guys belly laughed at the mere mention of a 17 inch laptop ever seeing the light of day

The thing that makes it worse is that it's wide screen. And wither way it's very awkard to carry something that large around. I'd guess the 17" fits most peoples needs.

The way I look at it is that most people don't have bigger then a 17" monitor, and with LCD's, you don't need more than a 15". So why would you want to carry around a larger display then most people have? Apple gave professionals a standard size display in a very small form with a computer with it. If you are showing someone something they can look at it like the normally look at their display, the bigger displays 20", 22", 23" and all that are for video and graphic work when your at your desk. Normally no need to take that with you.

A 20 would be about 2.5 inches wider and 1.6 inches deeper than the current 17 pb. I find the current 17 pb has the right amount of real estate to do almost anything and not feel crowded. Add Expose in with that it would be several years and a G5 at about 3.5 before I upgrade again. The size and weight of all the computer related equipment is next to nothing when compared to lugging around camera equipment.

An 18" to 20" PowerBook G5 would be used by those in the film industry....i.e. they need the screen size and they need the power, as portability would be a secondary issue here.

i imagine people in the film industry have towers rather than pbooks to do their work on... soreiously... i mean, at best they would be screening dailies, and who really needs anything bigger than 17 inch to review basic footage... its not like their doing visual effects on them.

All this talk about thin seems to be putting form over function. I've always thought that 1.1" seemed cool, but anorexic, in my view. I could easily love a Powerbook at 1.5", especially if it gives me a G5 with greater battery life than is currently offered.